and it is preserved in the archives of the Clockmakers' Company as one
of their most valuable treasures, for it is the earliest known English
jewelled watch, and is the identical instrument produced before the
House of Commons Committee, as evidence to upset, and which did upset,
poor Facio's claim for an extension of patent. Alas, for ancient
reputations, it has been but recently discovered that Huggeford's watch
was but a fraud, and that the jewel on the cock which deceived the
Parliamentary Committee into supposing that Ignatius Huggeford, an
Englishman, had applied jewels to watches long before Facio had been
heard of, _has nothing to do with the working_ of the watch. The jewel
has been merely stuck on, just in the place where a jewel should be;
but as it is only fixed to the surface of the brass and no pivot plays
in the jewel, it may be averred that the amethyst has no more to do with
the movement of the watch than the silver ornaments on the watch-case.
It is clear by the words in Facio's petition that his application of
jewelling to watches was not merely done with the idea of ornamenting
them,--in that there would have been no novelty,--and it seems probable
that the amethyst would have been placed upon the face of the watch if
the object of inserting it anywhere had simply been ornamentation; to
speak plainly, none other than a fraudulent purpose could be served by
its being placed where it is. It is, we fear, not impossible that the
jewel was placed there at the insistence of some of the members of the
Clockmakers' Company, who, being perhaps jealous of the foreign
invention, and fearful of its effects upon their own private trade, were
still unable to prevent the grant of a patent, in May, 1703, for
fourteen years to the inventor. But by December of that year, when
application was made for the extension of the patent, they had had time
to consider affairs and to prepare their opposition. We may believe this
watch to have been Ignatius Huggeford's, and to have been all that it
was sworn to be by the members of that Company, but, when we remark that
neither is any mention whatever made by them, nor, as far as it appears,
any question asked of them before the Parliamentary Committee as to the
jewel being upon the cock during the whole of the time of its being in
their possession, we cannot but arrive at the conclusion that the jewel
was placed upon Huggeford's old watch--the date of which could be
shown--at the order of some of the members of the Clockmakers' Company
with the purpose of defeating the patent, and that the Committee of the
House of Commons were not as careful as they ought to have been in
inspecting the jewel, for if they had, they must have seen the want of
connexion between the amethyst and the pivot, which, it was pretended,
was working in it. The probability is that at this time our English
watch-makers scarcely knew how to apply a jewel, or otherwise they would
have inserted the pivot in a proper manner. The story is anyhow a very
extraordinary one, for, supposing the Clockmakers' Company to be
innocent of conspiracy on the subject, it must have been a miraculously
curious whim which possessed old Huggeford to insert a jewel as an
ornament in a place where it would not be seen, and still more wonderful
that it should, sham as it was, be placed exactly where it should suit
the purpose of after-litigation. Of course there can be no imputation
arising out of this incident to affect the members of the Clockmakers'
Company of the present time, for they are no more answerable for what
was done above a century and a half ago than the Parliament of to-day is
to be blamed for allowing the execution of Charles I., or for enacting
the laws which led to the loss of our American colonies.
After the invention of jewels for watches came a still more important
discovery.
Since 1530, when Gemma Frisius first proposed to ascertain the
relative longitude of any place or ship at sea, by means of an
horological machine for indicating the time of the first meridian, the
subject had excited the attention of most of our philosophers, but
unavailingly, as there was then no chronometrical instrument, upon
which reliance might safely be placed. Huygens, in 1664, had contrived
a time-piece actuated by a spring and regulated by a pendulum, but the
pendulum was affected by the tossing of the ship, and by a change of
temperature, as well as being subject, as was afterwards discovered,
to a variation in weight depending on the parallel of latitude. The
Academy of Sciences at Paris proposed, in 1720, a reward for the best
paper in reply to the question:--'What is the most perfect method of
preserving on the sea the equable motion of a pendulum?' The reward
was given to a Dutchman named Massy, but his plan was not carried out.
An English watch-maker named Henry Sully happened to be about this
time in Paris directing a large manufactory of chronometers, and he
presented the French Academy with a marine time-keeper of superior
construction to the time-pieces of that period, and accompanied his
gift by a memoir describing it. Whilst still engaged in the study of
his art, Sully, who was a clever man, unfortunately died, and the
opportunity of advance seemed to have passed away.
About this time Graham invented the Mercurial Compensation pendulum,
which consisted of a glass or iron jar filled with quicksilver and
fixed to the end of the pendulum rod, which, when heat lengthened the
rod, expanded simultaneously the quicksilver, and made the centre of
oscillation to continue at the same distance from the point of
suspension. He afterwards conceived a notion, which John Harrison
subsequently worked out, of making a compensation pendulum (or a
pendulum that should in itself contain the power of equalizing its own
action, whatever the change of temperature), forming it of various
metals. In 1726 Harrison invented what is called the gridiron
pendulum, composed of nine rods, five of steel and four of brass,
which are so arranged that those which expand most are counteracted
upon by those of less expansion. These two compensation pendulums, the
gridiron and mercurial, are still in use, and with slight improvements
are found to keep to time very accurately.
The period had now arrived for the making of marine time-keepers
sufficiently accurate for nautical use, and styled chronometers
because they are most accurate time-measurers. Their value to
navigators, and the immense impetus which would by such instruments
be given to the science of navigation, had long been foreseen, but
there were many great difficulties in the way of obtaining a perfect
chronometer. The sailor, before the invention of this instrument,
could ascertain the latitude of his ship at sea, by observation of the
fixed stars. Supposing these stars to have first appeared to him in
the zenith, and at his next observation to be one, two, or three
degrees south of the zenith, he would know that he had sailed just so
many degrees north of the place in which he first observed them. It
was not, however, so easy for him to compute longitudes, because the
diurnal revolution of the earth causes each meridian to pass
successively under the same stars. It was necessary to have an
accurate time-keeper, and to set it carefully to the solar time of
some port in the kingdom, whose longitude was well known. The
time-piece might then be carried out in a vessel sailing abroad, and
the computations made by means of it would prove most wonderfully
exact and important. By simply observing the moment at which the sun
reached his meridian, when of course it would be 12 o'clock at noon,
solar time, and then noting the difference between the solar time thus
ascertained and the time of the chronometer, the mariner would be able
by calculating 15 degrees to one hour of time, or 15 geographical
miles to one minute, to make out his longitude. For example, if the
time-piece had been set to time at the meridian of Greenwich
observatory, and if it be one o'clock by the time-piece when it is
mid-day, or meridian by the sun, then the place in which the longitude
is taken must be in long. 15 degrees east of the meridian of
Greenwich, and if it be eleven o'clock by the chronometer when the sun
attains his meridian, then the place must be in long. 15 degrees west
of the meridian of Greenwich. It is not indispensably necessary, that
every chronometer used for maritime purposes should keep time exactly
with that of the Greenwich observatory, or of any other instrument of
known excellence, provided always that its _rate_ as seamen call it,
or the daily loss or gain of the chronometer, is well ascertained, and
so may be computed in the calculations to be made. The indispensable
requisite of a chronometer, however, is that the daily loss or gain
shall not vary materially from itself at different periods, or under
the changes of temperature of different climates, and these qualities
being found in an instrument of any shape or make, constitute a marine
chronometer.
It will be generally obvious of what immense and universal importance
it was for men who 'go down to the sea in ships and do their business
on the great waters' to be provided with a chronometer, and so be
enabled to calculate with a great degree of nicety,--almost as a
traveller by land learns his distances by milestones and
finger-posts,--the precise position on the wide ocean of the vessel
they are engaged in navigating. So impressed was the British
Parliament with the value of such an invention, that as early as 1714,
in the reign of Queen Anne, a reward of £10,000 was offered, for any
method for determining the longitude within the accuracy of one
degree; of £15,000 within the limit of 40 geographical miles; and of
£20,000 within the limit of 30 geographical miles, or half a degree,
provided such method should extend 80 miles from the coast. In 1736
John Harrison invented the first chronometer, for which, after having
added many improvements, he received the gold medal of the Royal
Society in 1749. He still continued to persevere in improvements in
his instrument, and at last applied to be allowed to test its powers
in such a voyage as might permit of proof of its value. After some
time his application was granted, and his son, William Harrison,
embarked at Portsmouth, Nov. 18, 1761, for Jamaica. After eighteen
days sailing the vessel was computed to be 13° 50´ west of Portsmouth,
when the distance calculated by the watch was 15° 19´. When the vessel
arrived at Madeira, on the 9th of December, it was found that the
reckoning was corrected by the time of the piece, about a degree and a
half. From Madeira to Jamaica the reckoning was amended 3°; and at the
several islands where the ship touched the known longitudes agreed
very closely with those indicated by the chronometer. Upon having
returned again to England after a very stormy voyage, the instrument
underwent examination, and its entire error amounted to 1^m. 53^s. 5.
Harrison, on this report being made, obtained from Parliament a reward
of £5000. A second experiment was afterwards made in 1764, in March of
which year Harrison left Portsmouth with his instrument on board the
Tartar for Barbadoes. He had previously conveyed to the Lords of the
Admiralty his statement of the rates at which his chronometer went,
and the extent to which it was affected by change of temperature. On
May 13th the vessel arrived at Barbadoes, and it was found that the
amount of the daily deviations from mean time was only 43^s. in
excess. He returned to England after an entire voyage of 156 days, and
found that, allowing the gain of one second per day as stated by him
in his sealed 'rate,' the whole gain was only 54^s. Harrison then was
examined by a committee appointed for the purpose, and, having
explained satisfactorily to them the principles of his instrument, he
received another £5000. A trial was then made by another person with a
chronometer made upon Harrison's plan, and this experiment also
terminating favourably, the remaining parliamentary reward was paid
over to Harrison, amounting in all to £20,000, a sum which was still
further increased by gratuities from the Board of Longitude and the
East India Company.
Harrison's improvements in time-measuring were of considerable
importance, as any one may readily conceive, but he was sufficiently
candid to acknowledge that the balance, balance-spring, and
compensation curb, as then used, were not simultaneously affected by
changes of temperature, that small pieces were more readily affected
than large ones, and pieces in motion sooner than pieces at rest,
whence he concluded that if the provision for heat and cold could
properly be arranged in the balance itself, as in his gridiron
pendulum-clocks, the time might be better kept.
Harrison's suggestion of a compensation balance in lieu of a
compensating curb, incited Peter le Roy, a native of France, to the
consideration of the question, and ultimately to the invention of a
balance acted upon by mercury and alcohol. The compensation was
effected by the balance itself, which, carrying the two thermometers,
adjusted the mercury nearer or farther from the centre of the balance,
according to the state of the atmosphere.
About this period there was considerable emulation exhibited, both
here and on the continent, upon the subject of time-measuring. Sully
had aided largely in the advancement of the art of watch-making in
London and Paris. Berthoud, Julien, and Pierre le Roy made many
ingenious propositions, and amongst others the invention of the
detached escapement is attributed to the last-named.
In England we find the names of Arnold, Earnshaw, and Mudge associated
about this date with the greatest improvements in chronometry, and as
being those to whom prizes were at different times awarded by the
Board of Longitude. In fact, few great inventions have since been made
in the art, and our present high position as chronometer-makers is
mainly due to the skill, energy, and perseverance then exhibited.
It would be superfluous to give any detailed description of the many
valuable advantages derived from the science of horology, to which
indeed all arts, sciences, trades, and callings are considerably
indebted, and will probably be still more so in proportion to the
increase of the use of steam-power and electricity. As by means of
these recently-discovered powers mankind are enabled to compress into
a day what would previously have required weeks and even months to
accomplish, so must they regard with higher esteem, as these
improvements are extended, the science by means of which they may
divide and subdivide the precious minutes which are sufficient to
perform so much. It will be worth while by way of illustration to
point to the assistance given by horology to astronomical and nautical
science. It is by means of carefully-made and exact chronometers that
we calculate the distance and relations of the various heavenly bodies
to ourselves and to one another. Having ascertained, by comparison,
the rapidity of light and sound, and that the former travels at the
rate of 192,000 miles per second, we discover that the light of the
sun requires eight minutes to reach the earth, and thus compute the
sun's actual distance from us. So also observing the number of seconds
which elapse between the flash of lightning and the roll of thunder,
or between the flash and report of a cannon, and remembering that in
mild weather sound travels at the rate of 1123 feet, and in frosty
weather 1080 feet in a second, we shall be able, on making allowances
for the state of the atmosphere, to arrive at a tolerably correct
conclusion as to distances. It is by means of a chronometer, though it
be but a sand-glass, that the sailor uses his log-line at sea and
finds the rate of his vessel's speed. His lead, enclosed in the log,
or wood, is attached to the log-line, which has certain lengths called
knots marked upon it for nautical miles, and according to the knots
paid out in the half-minute of the sand-glass, so is the ship's rate
of sailing, _i. e._, if ten knots are passed in half a minute the
vessel's speed is at the rate of ten miles an hour.
It would be both impossible and unnecessary to describe the various
experiments in which it is of great consequence to measure time into
minute proportions,--the number of these increases with advancing
science; it will suffice if we have made the subject sufficiently
interesting to the general reader to induce him to inquire further
into the details. It is only by such investigations that he will be
enabled to give anything like a proper answer to the question 'What is
Time?'
MODERN WATCHES:
THEIR VARIETIES AND MODES OF MANUFACTURE.
'He that would wear a watch two things must do,--
Pocket his watch and watch his pocket too.'--_Old Maxim._
The first possession of a watch by young persons of either sex is
perhaps one of the most vividly retained of all their early memories.
The sense of responsibility, of importance, which such a wonderful
little piece of mechanism gives to them, the alacrity with which they
thenceforth note the flight of time and compare the working of all
other time-pieces, is remarkable. One of the first things usually done
by the juvenile with his or her watch is, curiously enough, to
challenge thereby the performance of the old-established time-pieces
in the house,--even the infallible old Hall Clock, a very Nestor among
clocks, does not escape scrutiny. Woe be to his ancient reputation if,
when 'weighed by the new balances'--compensation or otherwise,--he be
'found wanting.' The yet unfledged urchin will, upon the evidence of
his own newly-acquired chronometer, unhesitatingly expose and
denounce the slightest delinquency of the antique time-piece, and
pride and plume himself accordingly. At this time of day, when watches
of a sound and durable kind may be had for a comparatively small sum,
and when education commences so early, it may be supposed that youths
attain earlier to years of discretion, and so rise to the dignity of
watch-wearers sooner than their predecessors did. Anyhow, the value of
time can scarcely be inculcated at too juvenile an age, nor can it be
brought home to the mind of the pupil without providing him with the
means of studying the operations of his own personal time-keeper. From
the hour when such a gift comes into his possession until the latest
day of his life a watch remains his indispensable mentor, and,
literally, his bosom-friend. There are few, perhaps none, who can look
upon the face of an old watch, their day and night companion for many
years, without associating it with the bygone times when it reckoned
off for them their moments of pain or anxiety, their joys and sorrows.
There is perhaps scarcely any memento of a friend or relative so
suggestive as that semi-living object which has been his constant
friend for so long, the chief valuable of all his 'portable property.'
Our Old English popular rhymes and songs have frequently been pointed
with witticisms directed at the care with which watches have been
guarded, or the dexterity with which they have been filched away. Who
can overlook the evergreen old dramatic joke, of which the point
consisted in connecting the time-teller with the name of the ancient
street-guardian; _e.g._:--
'I knocked him down, then snatched it from his fob.
"Watch, watch!" cried he, when I had done the job;
"My watch is gone!" said he: said I, "Just so,
Stop where you are, watches were made to go."'
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| [Illustration: The Horizontal Watch.] |
| |
| [Illustration: The Skeleton Lever Watch.] |
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Who can forget Dickens's description of the watch of the wonderful
Captain Cuttle, which, if you set so far forward at night and so far
backward in the morning, was asserted to be 'a watch that would do
anybody credit;' or again, how can we omit mention of that earlier
Dickensian figure, mentioned by Sam Weller, wearing his enormous watch
with so much happy fearlessness, his seals dangling from his fob, the
continual temptation and despair of eager pick-pockets, whose
ineffectual efforts to abstract the watch from such a tightly-protuberant
stomach, were the never ceasing delight of its jolly proprietor? Who
shall narrate the characteristics of the various fashions in watches,
and the trinkets that were worn along with them, the manners of the
fine gentlemen who carried two at a time soon after swords were exchanged
for walking-canes, and when pantaloons anticipated the easier but less
graceful trowsers? Snuff-boxes, bag-wigs, pig-tails, high cravats,
shoe-buckles, have all gone more or less out of fashion, but the watch
is a perennial, which may indeed change its outer-casing and its
decorations, like man himself, but knows no period of absolute
disuse since first it started into being.
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| [Illustration: The Full Plate Patent English Lever.] |
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| [Illustration: Three-Quarter Plate English Lever.] |
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From the time when the first Nuremberg egg-watch was produced, there
has always been noticeable an endeavour to make pocket time-pieces
more and more small and portable so far as they could be made so
consistently with their durability. Sometimes the love of very minute
workmanship has been carried to an extreme, but toy-watches of
eccentric shapes and patterns are but the few exceptions to the
general rule, which has settled that usefulness and convenience are
best provided for within certain moderate sizes, and that of all
shapes the round and flat are the most easily carried. The great
object of the watch-maker's ambition is to produce a time-keeper
minutely accurate, and yet not so delicately constructed that it
cannot withstand the rough usage to which even moderately careful
wearers subject it.
It has been estimated that the manufacture of and trade in watches
annually in England, France, Switzerland, and America, amount to over
£5,000,000 per ann.; and that in Switzerland alone there are 38,000
persons, one-third of whom are women, engaged in the manufacture. It
is probable that even the immense number of new watches thus annually
produced barely exceeds the growing requirements of the people, who,
as they increase in intelligence and receive higher wages, soon learn
the advantage of personally possessing a pocket time-keeper, and make
it accordingly their first ambition to purchase one. The Watch Clubs
which are formed in the various towns and rural districts throughout
the kingdom enable this desire to be gratified at but small pecuniary
inconvenience, inasmuch as payment is thus made in small instalments
at fixed intervals, and the watch is bought with sums which might have
been spent thoughtlessly and to no permanent benefit. This first
lesson in thrift having been well learnt, and the result being so
palpably beneficial to those who exercise it, has often laid the basis
of a regular habit of economy.
The motive power in the watch is derived, not as in the clock from
weights, but from a spiral spring called THE MAINSPRING, set in a
drum or barrel, and any inequality in the pressure of the spring is
fatal to regular time-keeping. A highly tempered and finished spring
is a primary requisite in watch-making; in order to provide for the
uniform transmission of motive power from the barrel throughout the
train to the escapement, the fusee and chain are used, the fusee being
a hollow-sided cone, and the chain round it. When the spring is wound
up its force is of course greatest, for the chain is then acting on
the smallest end of the fusee. The proportions of the barrel to the
centre wheel, and the size of the teeth in that wheel, have all to be
carefully planned, and adjusted to one another, and these all again to
the moving of the hands upon the dial.
The ESCAPEMENT is one of the most important parts of the mechanism of
a watch. It may be one of either of the following.
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| [Illustration: Verge Escapement.] |
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The _Verge_ escapement, as applied to Watches, will be seen annexed,
A, part of the balance; _b_, the verge body; C, C, the pallets; D, the
escape-wheel; E, escape-wheel pinion. The verge or arbor B of the
balance has two pallets, C, C, which stand out at right angles, so as
to be acted on alternately by the sloping teeth in the opposite sides
of the crown or escapement-wheel, C.
The _Horizontal_ escapement, on the following page, so called because
of the escape-wheel acting horizontally to the axis of the balance.
This invention was perfected by Graham, after the death of the
inventor, his master and friend, Thomas Tompion. _a_, the
escape-wheel, having pins or stems rising from it, on the tops of
which are teeth of a wedgelike form, of such a length as to permit
little freedom within and without the cylinder _b_, which is firmly
fixed to the balance _c_. Although _b_ is one piece, the two edges of
the hollow part serve as distinct pallets, inasmuch as they receive
alternately, during each vibration of the balance, an impulse from the
curved outer edge of each tooth in succession; and as the wedge-shaped
tooth passes from the pallet, the coming tooth falls on to the
circular part of the cylinder, and there remains until the return of
the balance, when that tooth which had previously rested on the
circular portion of the cylinder, comes upon the edge or pallet, gives
impulsion to the balance _c_, and falls upon the concave portion of
the cylinder, and there remains until the balance again returns, when
another impulse takes place, and so on in succession. Watches having
the cylinder escapement were not known in France till the year 1728,
when Julien le Roy obtained one of them from Graham.
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| [Illustration: Horizontal Escapement.] |
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| [Illustration: Duplex Escapement.] |
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